Advertising of products has generally been a passive endeavor. The manufacturer or salesperson advertises goods for sale, and the consumer purchases. More recently, viral marketing has allowed for the distribution of advertising material to a vast network of individuals. In the case of social networking sites, peers of a particular user may be targeted as being associated with a particular user. However, in any of these scenarios, the participant and peers are still uninvolved viewers of advertising content.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and apparatus that overcome the drawbacks of the prior art and provides more active participation of users in advertising.